Finland’s tiny navy will face a crisis in the mid-2020s as half its surface combat fleet — four of eight missile boats in total — retires. To prevent this crisis, the navy is upgrading is planning to build four corvettes which are larger than anything currently in the fleet,... Read more

The Finnish Defense Forces does several things differently from the militaries of the United States and most of Europe. It’s partly due to circumstance. Universal male conscription — deriving from a history of very bloody wars with Russia and a principle of neutrality — means that most Finnish men... Read more

Between 1922 and 1940, Aimo Johannes Lahti designed some of Finland’s best small arms, including pistols, submachine guns, machine guns and anti-tank guns. Until the end of World War I, Finland had been an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire and, as such, relied on Russian small arms. The Mosin-Nagant... Read more

Osprey Publishing sponsored this post. In November 1939 a conversation took place in the Kremlin that Vesa Nenye, Peter Munter and Toni Wirtanen — authors of the new book Finland at War: The Winter War 1939-40 from Osprey Publishing — describe as “prophetic.” After centuries of tension, newly independent... Read more